"We can hardly expect sanctions to be lifted shortly. At the same time, of course political and economic logics objectively direct the developments exactly towards their lifting. This will happen sooner or later," Valentina Matviyenko said in an interview with the Izvestia daily on Tuesday.

She also marked that sanctions had created certain problems not only for the Russian economy, but also the economies of the countries that had imposed them.

"We have to a great extent coped with the difficulties that emerged, our national economy is entering a growth phase. And the bulk of the Russian nationals don’t believe either that sanctions have sizably complicated their lives," she went on, citing a recent survey by Levada-Center pollster, according to which 75% of the polled Russians said their families were not affected by the sanctions.

She said the fact that sanctions persist "has no rational explanation". "Evidently, some statesmen in the West believe that moving to lift them, they will lose face, will see their positions weakened," Matviyenko said.